merziac

Fantastic work Kurt, makes my luddite head spin just thinking about trying to help.

cudak888 

Things have come a long way from hand-coding some HTML into a text document and calling it good.

-Kurt

merziac

Wouldn't know a thing about it, never even tried to get a grasp.

I did manage to get well into electronic engine control as a Ford driveability tech but that's not remotely the same.

cudak888 

EEC-IV?

-Kurt

cudak888 

Only a few more things to photograph remain:

1949 Raleigh Export catalog (Canada)
1970 Raleigh US catalog (it arrived, thank you @nlerner)
1981 Raleigh Canada catalog (again)

Meanwhile, @spclark is cropping the '81 US catalog, and I just realized I also need to re-crop the '51-53 US parts catalog as I took another batch of sharper photographs.

I also have the following left to color correct and add metadata:

1951 Sturmey-Archer shop manual
1954 Raleigh Parts Catalog (Peter Kohler says it's '54, which is as good proof as anyone needs, though the content in the catalog suggests it's 1949 - I'd really like to confirm with him).

A few teasers:













Last thing - does anyone have this 1978 Raleigh catalog? My original scans of it are too small.



-Kurt

spclark 

Speaking of which... You've Got Mail!

nlerner

Kurt, at some point someone shared some scans of that catalog with me: https://drive.google.com/drive/folde...usp=drive_link

Hopefully those are better quality than what you have (but somehow i doubt it!).

cudak888 

Got it.

Unfortunately, access is restricted on that folder.

Chances are they are better (and there are some copies kicking about the internet that are), but I'd only use them if whoever scanned them originally gives their OK. I realize this is all in Fair Use territory, but I don't feel it's right to pilfer off someone else's time and effort scanning these without their OK and thanks (unlike a certain French site, but I'll leave it at that).

-Kurt

nlerner

Makes sense. I’ll see if I can track down who sent it to me though it’s likely in an old email system that didn’t survive into the current decade.

abdon 

I take it the 1982 catalog is a myth? I have a hole on my touring bike spreadsheet. For that year it should be either the Touring 14 or the Touring 18.

cudak888 

Those are UK models. I know I've had a chance to see scans of the French 1980 and UK 1981 Town and Around catalogs, and that doesn't cover touring bikes, so at present, we don't have catalog entries for them (to my knowledge). @bulgie's 1982-84 UK Racers catalogs do not include the touring models either.

FYI, this is the only record I can find of the UK 1981 catalog right now; I can't find the aforementioned scans I located last year thanks to Google (come to think of it, DuckDuckGo usually brings up older pages with ease):


-Kurt

cudak888 

@nlerner - I was able to see the '78 catalog. That's the one that was used for the Headbadge way back when. According to the site, Al Mason scanned it and you did the PDF-to-JPG conversion.

Unfortunately, it looks as if those 850x1099 copies may be in their native size as scanned. Much smaller than I'm aiming for presently.

EDIT: Testing to see if Al is still here. @roccobike

-Kurt

AdventureManCO 

Wow, looking good.

abdon 

That's not correct. The Touring 14 is in the 1981 US catalog, the Touring 18 is in the 1983 US catalog. I don't know what was offered in 1982.

cudak888 

I've definitely been looking at too many of these catalogs then to make this much of a brain fart. Indeed, @abdon is correct; this appears to be a nameplate that spanned both the Nottingham and Raleigh USA eras. Right now, the '81 and '82 US pre-Huffeigh catalogs are the elusive ones.

FYI, the "1981" catalog (as on the website right now) is the 1980 catalog. This has been fixed on the site update. Same for the the '48 ("USA") catalog which is the '47-48 UK catalog. The 1954 Canada is 1952.

All of this has been corrected since, but there's tons of work still going on besides. Yesterday involved creating the replacement Raleigh Serial Numbers page, for instance. Not only does the look of the page require updating, so does the information, and there's a submit-your-bike-and-serial database that I need to cobble up using the same plugins as I used for the new Schwinn Paramount Registry. Oh, and some of the Brooks saddle badge era info is a bit off, and I have submissions via the email system that provide some updates for that too.

In short, lots of things happening. (EDIT: Apologies if you're waiting on a reply from me, sometimes I avoid emails and PMs just to prevent getting distracted).

-Kurt

abdon 

That's understandable. I have an extremely myopic focus on just steel lugged touring bikes. I can't name any other bike that was on any of those catalogs :}

I I recall reading something about how 1982 was either a year where they were going through some internal transition or economic woes and that the 1982 US catalog may or may not exist? When I saw that I found it hard to believe but it could also be that they issued very little of them with minimal distribution.

cudak888 

I was looking through my photo archives for something completely unrelated when I ran across 2010-dated Raleigh catalog PDFs - really good ones - from 1939 (not the same '39 catalog as Retro Raleighs), 1940, 1955, the (already-scanned) 1957, 1958, and 1959. They are all, curiously, password locked, and I wouldn't question this other than this same series includes '62, 67, 68, 70, and '72, and the '72 catalog is clearly the Retro Raleigh's copy with scribbling on the cover, suggesting whoever password protected these was being rather cheeky.

I'd really like to track down who did these scans, as some of these catalogs aren't anywhere to be viewed today, or really difficult to track down. Sturmey-Archer Heritage has shared a few pages of the 1940 catalog from the same scans (with cleaned up cropping), and Three Speed Hub has a different copy of the '40 UK.

I seem to remember one organization being stingy with their catalog copies ages ago, but can't put my finger on it. Are these old V-CC .PDFs? They don't line up with the ones the University of Warwick lists in the National Cycle Archive, which the V-CC cites is a joint venture, but V-CC is the only organization I can think of offhand with the motivation to lock down a .PDF file.

For the record, these are the cover pages of the '39 and 40 from these PDFs:






Focus is good. I'm all over the place with The Headbadge; meanwhile, look what Neil has done with My TI-Raleigh SBDU in the time period I've ignored my own site.

I don't recall the specifics, but the ONLY North American 1982 Raleigh printed advertising content I've seen are the magazine advertisements for the stillborn 1982 Raleighsonic International II and Competition II.

-Kurt

cudak888 

@bulgie, I just realized some of these question-mark catalogs (above) are from Ray Chong's scans based on our emails from 2020 when the catalog database went down - but the '39 or '40 don't seem to be in your database. Would you know if these are also Ray's, or another source?

-Kurt

abdon 

The Touring 14 was a high tensile steel frame, the touring 18 was their first chromoly double butted frame. Speaking of which I can't find any reference as to what tubing they used for their Touring 18 model, and if it was their "Raleigh" 555T the jury is still out as to what that tubing actually is. If somebody has a Touring 18, please let me know what the sticker says.

But regarding 1982; It is nice to know that the Touring 1x was a model shared with the UK, but it doesn't help that I can't find a 1982 catalog that tells me what they were selling in the UK that year...

nlerner

Kurt, I downloaded lots of catalogs from the VCC library (I am a member), but I think you already have scans of those. I do have that 1940 catalog, watermarked with the threespeedhub.com logo. Have you been in touch with Nick, the proprietor of that site? If not, I might be able to connect you.

cudak888 

P.S..: I might start asking around for photos of some of the various Raleigh serial types over the years (again). I have enough of a fleet (and so do some neighbors) that I'm pretty well off getting pictures off what I have here, but there are a few gaps I don't have. More to come shortly.

I might have misled you, as I don't know of a Touring 1x model in the UK - I was initially misled as the entire '82 UK range used the same "Number / Speeds" naming convention. They did have entry level touring models under the Stratos 10 and Europa 5 / Europa 10, but I don't want to claim anything past that until other UK catalogs pop up - which have been few and far between for the late 1970's.

Do you know if these exact 1939 and 1940 catalog scans are part of the VCC library? I wouldn't share them if their intent is to be behind a paywall, but I'm also trying to find out if these were just clickbooted from various sources no longer available online.

I know Nick has an unrelated copy of the '40 UK, and he was lucky enough to get a better copy to work from. Given that he watermarks each catalog, I dare say he's less than open to them being shared (any more than I am - I just don't believe in watermarking these catalogs).

-Kurt

nlerner

Kurt, fwiw, I'm looking at the VCC Library site right now, and the covers of the 1939 and 1940 catalogs are the same as above. However, the 1940 cover is in much better shape than the one you show, so perhaps the source you found was not the VCC Library.